


Doctor, Meet Mechanic

by UndomesticatedEquines



Series: Kyle is a Good Bro [1]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Canon compliant to end of S2, I just want them all to be friends, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kyle POV, M/M, Michael and Alex are not together in this but they love each other, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:41:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28207737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UndomesticatedEquines/pseuds/UndomesticatedEquines
Summary: Kyle didn’t know all that much about Michael Guerin—angry cowboy, drunk, telekinetic, apparent genius. So when one day Michael said he had something for him and to drop by the junkyard, Kyle didn't know what to expect. He definitely did not expect Michael to have saved his career.
Relationships: Michael Guerin & Kyle Valenti, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: Kyle is a Good Bro [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2066322
Comments: 22
Kudos: 106





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kyle meets Michael at the junkyard for a surprise.

Kyle didn’t know all that much about Michael Guerin—angry cowboy, drunk, telekinetic, apparent genius. His interactions with the alien at this point had mostly involved their work in the lab. And there, he was always in full Doctor Mode. While he was trying to learn enough about alien anatomy to resurrect his high school ex-girlfriend’s alien lover (and wasn’t _that_ a lot to unpack), Guerin was trying and failing to not squirm or complain under his ministrations. Kyle internalized that as either Guerin’s hatred of his reliance on him, or his well-warranted primal fear of doctors, needles, and experimentation. Then if Guerin wasn’t playing reluctant guinea pig, he was usually drinking and cursing and still inventing brilliant nanotech lightyears ahead of anything on Earth. Regardless, Max was long back and lab time was over. No, Kyle didn’t have much experience with Michael Guerin.

He did, however, get bits and pieces here and there. Alex would always bemoan his loss of Guerin when he thought he wasn’t listening, citing his kindness and brilliance and passion—about his family, his projects, and in the sack. Kyle would always compare the version Alex had in his head with the Guerin he knew and, when feeling generous, could see his dedication to his family. And his brilliance, he supposed, even while drunk. But he _was_ drunk. Constantly. Above all, Kyle couldn’t see the kindness; all he saw were biting words and emotional pain the cowboy caused the people who loved him.

He got snippets on the nights when he, Alex, and Guerin would sit on Alex’s front porch with beers. The two ex-lovers needed a sort of buffer to be “friends,” which was a new thing they were trying. Kyle was not exactly happy with this new tradition, but as long as they avoided Alex’s and Guerin’s dating lives, any talk of Maria or life-and-death situations, it was congenial enough. It was nice to be able to talk openly about all the alien shit—not the big, holy-shit-what-are-we-going-to-do-about-Max’s-evil-doppelganger parts, but the little stuff. The this-is-the-weirdest-shit-I-have-ever-seen-and-I-need-to-address-that stuff. Like his dad. They might not know much about his involvement with Project Shepherd, or the cause of his falling out with Jesse Manes, but they knew he knew about aliens, and he’d told Helena Ortecho, of all people, and they’d apparently talked to Mimi about it? Which means parental figures all ‘round had known about aliens. And that… that was something that needed to be addressed.

In these conversations, he got tiny little pieces that told him he was missing a whole. Like, once he asked about Guerin’s control over his powers, how much better they seemed to be than Max and Isobel’s. Guerin responded with a shrug and a “Well after the first exorcism, I was pretty motivated.” Kyle stuttered on “first,” and Guerin shrugged again with, “Spoiler alert: the power of Christ did not compel me,” gave a lopsided grin, and changed the subject. Kyle looked at Alex, who had a sad frown leaking through his careful mask, but who didn’t seem surprised, and decided that told him a lot.

Another time, Guerin left early, because the Crashdown’s fryer wasn’t working. Kyle mentioned he didn’t know he did handyman work. “It’s the least I can do for Arturo,” Guerin said. “Max and Iz would always go there, and I couldn’t afford it, so I wouldn’t order anything, but the man kept bringing me food. And when I’d argue, he’d pull me aside and tell me it’d dropped on the floor and he couldn’t sell it.” He laughed. “Do you know how long it took me to figure out he was lying? Just trying to make sure I ate something I didn’t find in a dumpster or Max or Iz’s plates? Sometimes the only meal I’d get all week was from him.” Guerin got quiet, then. “Even after… after Rosa, and I was avoiding him, he’d find me and give me the food he ‘couldn’t sell.’” His head fell. “It’s the least I can do for Arturo,” he said hoarsely, leaving. Again, Kyle looked to Alex for guidance, and again, Alex did not look surprised.

On one such night, Kyle had finished trying to explain how he felt about his dad now, knowing how many secrets he kept, and how he felt about modeling himself after a man who was not who he thought. He was moving on to wondering how he was going to keep his job with all the exploded, missing medical equipment, even with the Dean of Surgery’s daughter as his girlfriend, when Michael Guerin had surprised him with a casual, “Oh, I have something for you back at my bunker. If you drop by tomorrow, I’ll show you.”

“What? OK,” Kyle had said.

So today, he parked in the junkyard, got out, and took a look around. He hadn’t been here much, and wasn’t sure where to look, but he heard a curse and a clang. He sighed and followed the noise to find Guerin under the hood of an ancient VW Bug.

Guerin must’ve heard the footsteps, because he gave a polite, “Be right with you,” which frankly, surprised Kyle, although in hindsight he _did_ work in customer service. He just never pictured Guerin speaking without his normal combative tone.

“It’s cool, I’ve got time,” he said, and Guerin lifted his head out.

“Kyle, hey. Just a second.” He did something under the hood with a wrench, and glanced to where his tools were. “Actually, can you hand me a –” He cut himself off. “Right. No one else here?”

Kyle looked around. “Um, no?” He said, and then watched as Guerin held a nut with the wrench with one hand and just… glared at a bolt, which screwed itself in. “That must be handy,” he observed.

“It is. Just the first time I’ve done that with an audience that isn’t Max.” Guerin straightened, tried to wipe the grease off his hands with a rag, then seemed to just give up on that losing battle. “Come on,” he said, walking away.

Kyle trailed him back to the Airstream, watched him narrow his eyes and move it with his brain, and followed him down, still not really clear on what was going on, but reciting the mantra, “Not insane, not insane” in his head like he did whenever confronted with now-casual alien weirdness, like it would convince him of anything.

The bunker had been neatened since he’d last been in here, watching Guerin float his ex-brother-in-law’s body onto the worktable and performing an alien autopsy. The assorted lighting fixtures were still there, and the thing under the tarp on the side, but the notes and scraps and other miscellany had been organized and put away to make room for several large machines. They looked a bit charred, even dented in places, and they all looked familiar, like…

“Is this the medical equipment from the hospital?” he asked.

Guerin gave a shrug, scratching at the back of his neck and looking away. “Yeah. I mean, I know you’re probably going to get fired for taking it, and you couldn’t really return broken equipment, and you used it to save Max’s life.”

Kyle looked around, confused. “So what’s it all doing here?”

“I fixed it.”

Kyle whipped his head back at Guerin, who was still scratching and looking away. “You what?”

“I fixed it. I mean, I know they’re not cleaned up—I can do body work on them—I know the hospital won’t take them all dirty like this, but they work again,” Guerin said, finally turning to look at him. “I can fix up the outsides, and you can return them.”

Kyle tried to take a moment to process this, he really did, but instead, what he said was, “You can’t have fixed them all. They’re—that!” he said, pointing. “That is a half a million dollar personal genome machine. You—you don’t know the first thing about it.”

Guerin did the same shrug. “Watched you guys use it, took it apart, did some Googling, called Liz to find out how to test it. It works.”

That… that was a top-of-the-line machine. Brand new. Heavily patent-protected. “Can you show me some of the results you’ve gotten?” When Guerin frowned, he said, “Just… just to be sure.”

The frown didn’t go away, but he did show him the results, which were, as far as Kyle could tell, exactly right for Guerin’s genes. And considering how long he’d spent looking at them, he was pretty sure.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d stood there when Guerin interrupted his broken thoughts with, “Oh, the ultrasound was super fuzzy when I put it back together. I tried to clean up the picture some, but I don’t know if it’s good enough.” He followed Guerin to the ultrasound numbly, watching him turn it on, and hold out the scanner. The doctor took it, Guerin stripped off his ratty shirt, and Kyle took a look at his backwards-ventricle alien heart with the machine. And froze. What he was looking at… couldn’t be an ultrasound.

Ultrasounds were a preferred imaging tool because they’re so non-invasive. There’s no harmful radiation, there’s no lying still for a half an hour while loud clanging occurs, there’s just quick, lo-res imaging. The convenience and safety of it make allowances for the resolution. But this… This was no low resolution. This was… this was high. This was miles above what a normal ultrasound could do. This was… amazing. He meant to ask questions, to thank him, or to fall back on the doctor’s your-heart-is-healthy news, but all that came out of his mouth was, “Whoa.”

“So not too bad, then?” Kyle ripped his eyes away from the image to look back at Guerin, who was a bit slouched and looking at him with almost puppy dog eyes, like he was waiting to be kicked. “Good enough to return to the hospital?”

Kyle stared at him. He couldn’t stop staring. This needed to be patented. This was revolutionary. This would change the face of imaging. And this alien keeps looking at him like he didn’t just save his career, save lives with this better early-detection system. He was looking at him like he did something wrong, like Kyle will be mad. “Why would you do all of this?” he asked, which was definitely not the right thing to say.

Guerin flinched, looking away. “It’s not fair you get fired for helping people who wouldn’t get help otherwise. And… you saved Max. I don’t know why you did, but you did. And all of this…” he gestured at the workshop, “It’s a lot. I can’t give you a life without aliens in it, but I can fix machines. If you think it’ll work, I can help you get them back to the hospital after a touch-up. If not, at least you have access to them if you ever need to help anyone.”

Kyle kept staring, his brain stuttering, adjusting his opinion of Michael Guerin, flipping it, throwing it out and starting all over. He stared long enough for Guerin to squirm, put his shirt back on, and start to apologize, but Kyle cut him off. “This is amazing,” he said. “ _Thank you_. I have no idea if it’ll work, but it’s worth a shot. And if it doesn’t, this,” he said, gesturing to the ultrasound, “is amazing. An innovation like this—” he cut off whatever Guerin started to say, “—will save a lot of lives.”

They settled down to discuss logistics, and Kyle tried to convince Guerin to patent whatever magic he did to the ultrasound, but he refused, saying it wasn’t a big deal. No amount of arguing would budge him, either.

Kyle left a while later, his mind still whirring with the implications of what Guerin had just done—the brilliance needed to repair those intricate machines, the time it would take, the generosity—and while he tried to come up with a plan to explain different coverings for the equipment, his mind just kept stopping at one fact: He _really_ didn’t know Michael Guerin.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kyle wonders why Michael works so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to @beautifulcheat (Katalyst) for their work that taught me you have to acclimate foals to human touch, because Michael and a little, delicate foal has been a wonderful picture in my head ever since.

Kyle didn’t know when he started to notice how much Guerin was working. He didn’t really keep track of Guerin’s hours; he was too busy with patients and trying to figure out how to convince Guerin to patent his innovation for the ultrasound. There was a lot of money to be made with patents, he knew, especially when used in a device that would be widespread, but he didn’t think bringing up money with Guerin would be a good idea. He was pretty sure Alex would know how, but Alex had made it clear he didn’t want to talk about Guerin sober, let alone actively manipulate him into doing something he didn’t want to do. But Guerin didn’t exactly listen to anyone else, apart from Max and Isobel, and Max had been a little busy with his doppelganger. Eventually, he got off shift and drove to Isobel’s. She poured him some wine and fed him cheese and listened when he told her everything and smiled softly when she heard what her brother had done for him. Then he got to the patent bit and expressed his confusion about the unwillingness, and she snorted.

“You haven’t been paying attention,” she said. “Rules to surviving on an alien planet: never draw attention, never be extraordinary.”

“I didn’t even think—”

“’Course you didn’t. It’s only something that’s been drilled into our heads our entire lives, especially after…” she paused, “after Rosa.” She lifted her chin. “You really think it can help a lot of people?”

Kyle nodded. “But I don’t want—”

“I’m not going to get in his head,” she said, rolling her eyes. “His head is a mess anyway. Impossible to nail something down long enough to influence.” She frowned, thoughtful. “Fuck it. He is extraordinary, and he’s been hiding it long enough.” She got a glint in her eye and a predatory smile. “Leave it to me.”

So Kyle did, feeling vaguely uncomfortable at the prospect, worried that he’d just set some force upon Guerin as a poor thank you for his kindness. But he still had a job, especially now that he could say the equipment was being returned, and his patients didn’t know or care about his personal life. So he pushed it out of his mind, and certainly didn’t think about Guerin’s work habits.

But there were a few off-handed comments he got from his friends that made him wonder. Liz mentioned she was bouncing ideas off Guerin via video chat and he was running a few experiments for her. Alex mentioned he and Guerin were still looking into who’d let them out of the pods all those years ago, if Tripp hadn’t done it. Max mentioned Guerin and Isobel were helping him with the whole doppelganger thing, Isobel mentioned he did some emergency repair work for her when a boiler broke right before one of her events, and Maria, when asked, just mentioned he hadn’t been at the bar and changed the subject.

It was when the alien cowboy was late to one of the nights on Alex’s porch that Kyle started to put it together. Regardless of how Alex and Guerin professed they were acting, and regardless of the barbed words they’d have if left unsupervised, they both went out of their way to spend time with the other. Kyle surreptitiously texted Max to see if there was anything new about Jones, but there wasn’t, and Alex would’ve told him if Flint was making a move, so he relaxed and figured Guerin would show at some point.

Which ended up being about two hours later, when Guerin all but fell out of his truck, covered in mud, looking utterly exhausted. Alex took one look at him and got up to grab him a glass of water, asking Kyle to change chairs, since the one he was currently sitting in was the easiest to hose down.

“Sorry, one of the irrigation pipes on McMaster’s ranch burst. Had to build a levee to make sure the acre didn’t flood, and then do some quick repair work on the pipe,” Guerin said.

“You still take work out on the ranches?” Kyle asked.

“I pick up a shift here and there, when work’s slow on the junkyard.” Guerin shrugged. “I’ve done work for pretty much all of the ones around here; they know I do good work and am a pretty decent mechanic, so they call whenever they need another worker or something fixed.” He looked at them both, giving a tired smile. “So, what’d I miss?”

About a week later, Kyle dropped by the junkyard, wanting to go over the retrieval plan for the medical equipment, since he couldn’t very well levitate them out of the bunker himself. He hadn’t asked Isobel what she’d done, but the Dean of Surgery had promised that if the equipment was returned and passed all the checks, there would be no further mention of it. Instead he’d get credit for bringing the hospital the prestige of the ultrasound innovation, even if Guerin got the patent.

He noticed Guerin was with a customer, so he waited a bit for the man—was that Carl?—to load up his tractor and take off before approaching.

While they were talking, Sanders stomped over. “You undercharged him,” he said.

“Well, yeah. They lost nearly half their crop this season, remember? He can’t afford the full repair cost.” Guerin shrugged. “I had him pay for the parts, and guarantee me a shift in the spring, when the mares give birth. I get to acclimate the new foals to humans, which is always the best part of ranch work, the pay for the shift’ll go to the shop, and he can afford to pay his people a little longer.”

Sanders stared for a bit, then grunted, with the ghost of a smile so quick Kyle thought he imagined it. As he walked back to what passed for the junkyard office, he threw back, “I want those accounts done by the weekend!” to which Guerin responded, “They’re already done, old man! You too blind to see what’s on your desk?”

In the quiet that followed, Kyle asked, “You do the accounts?”

“Yeah, I do most of the running of this place. Think Sanders is trying to groom me.”

Kyle filed that away. “Do you often give discounts?” he asked.

“They’re not discounts—it’s barter. People pay what they can, when they can, and we figure it out when they can’t.” Guerin shrugged again—Kyle was starting to think of his ‘got caught doing a nice thing’ shrug—and changed the subject.

Finally, Kyle lost it when he found Guerin at the Crashdown replacing a broken pipe. “When do you sleep, man? _Do_ you sleep?”

Guerin just looked at him, blinking slowly. He glanced around to make sure no one else was there—the diner was empty, it being the end of the hospital night shift. “I mean, not really. Not since—since my mo—since Caulfield.” He paused, closing his eyes, then went back to the pipe, looking away from Kyle, and kept talking. “And then Max, and everything. The booze and the acetone helped, quiet everything down long enough for me to fall asleep—not always _stay_ asleep, mind, but at least get a few hours—but I’m kind of avoiding the Pony right now, and none of the other bars in town accept my credit. So I’m trying to keep busy, keep from relying too much on the acetone, because if you don’t combine it with the booze, you need a _lot_ more, and it’s worse. If I keep moving, it’s easier not to drink. And if I keep working long enough hours, sometimes I'll exhaust myself into sleeping a bit.”

And Kyle, Kyle had no response to that. His doctor brain went to sleeping pills, but they hadn’t really tested them against alien physiology. His med student brain had read enough psych textbooks to know that Guerin probably needed to talk to someone about everything that had happened recently, and about all the childhood trauma that he kept carefully hidden. And the rest of his brain remembered that Guerin wouldn’t. He couldn’t tell Max or Isobel, because, even from the small bits he knew, Max and Isobel were tied up with a lot of it, and to keep them from feeling guilty, there were things Guerin would never say to them. He trusted Alex, but that ‘friendship’ redefined hot mess, even with the definition that came from the Liz/Max fiasco. He didn’t talk to Maria, which Kyle had gathered was one of the reasons for the breakup, and Liz was a thousand miles away. Which left Jenna, who Kyle didn’t remember Guerin ever really speaking to, and Kyle himself, who Guerin still kind of hated. The alien couldn’t talk to a professional, either, for the same reason he’d never gone to a doctor’s office. Kyle had been able to take over doctor duties, but he wouldn’t be a good therapist for him—for one, he hadn’t studied that area, but for another, they were friends. Kyle wasn’t an impartial party—he was up to his eyeballs in this stuff, and he was barely keeping afloat with his own support system. And if _he_ was barely holding his head up, he couldn’t imagine how it was for Guerin. _He_ hadn’t been tossed around foster homes and abused. He hadn’t spent his entire life searching for his family only to find them and watch them blow up without even a conversation. God only knew what other trauma Guerin had buried. And Guerin would never trust an outsider about the alien stuff. Hell, he was pretty sure Guerin only barely trusted him, if that.

But his friend brain, the part that recognized that they were at least on the road to becoming less ‘forced, common interest partners’ and more ‘friends’, said, “Hey, if you ever want to talk about it, I’m here.”

Guerin’s arms stopped moving for a long moment. Kyle couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see what he was thinking. Then the mechanic said, “Thanks,” and went back to work.

It was the first time Kyle’d offered to help and hadn’t gotten a sarcastic comment, so he counted that as a win. But he was getting really sick of having to edit his view of Michael Guerin.

**Author's Note:**

> I just want them all to communicate and be friends. And since Michael's love language is acts of service (with everyone except Alex, with whom it's touch), I wanted someone to recognize just how much he does for the people he loves (and how brilliant he is). And Kyle, who really doesn't interact with him much, was the perfect person for it.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * A [Restricted Work] by [Podcath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Podcath/pseuds/Podcath) Log in to view. 




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